by Rachel Hore
In the café, he ordered fish and chips and when it arrived he ate it slowly, but by the time his plate was empty Harry still hadn’t appeared, so he paid the bill and returned to the hotel. There was no one on the desk in the hall when he passed, but he was too concerned about Harry to think of ringing the bell again to ask if there was any post for him, so he took the stairs two at a time and tried the door. It opened, and he was relieved to see Harry there just sitting on the bed. He’d dressed and combed his hair and held his hat in his hand. He glanced up at Paul’s entrance and said gravely, ‘You’re right, of course. I’ve decided to go home.’
‘I’m glad,’ Paul said, surprised but relieved at the same time. As he watched Harry slowly pack, he came to a decision. ‘Would you take a letter for me?’
‘Is it for Sarah? Yes, of course.’ They hadn’t discussed the matter at all, but then they didn’t need to. Harry knew how much Paul’s mind dwelled on her.
‘I want to be sure it reaches her. If you have a chance to go to Flint Cottage and give it to her yourself . . . into her own hand, then at least I’ll know . . .’
Harry nodded, so Paul took a fresh piece of paper, thought for a moment, then quickly scribbled a few lines on it. He sealed it in an envelope. Harry rose and took it and slipped it into his inside pocket.
They smoked a final cigarette together and spoke desultorily of this and that. It was hard to part after so long a time they’d spent together, so many hardships shared, so often that each had helped the other.
‘I will see you again?’ Paul said, but when he glanced up he was surprised to see that Harry’s eyes shone bright with unshed tears.
‘Of course, old man, of course,’ Harry said. They shook hands very firmly and clapped each other on the back.
‘Convey my regards to . . . everyone,’ Paul said and Harry nodded, pressing his lips together firmly.
Then, without looking back, Harry took up his case and left, closing the door quietly behind him. All the warmth of the room went with him.
The very same evening, Paul was faced by the furious proprietress when he came back to the hotel after his meal. ‘So your friend’s gone now, has he? Well I want you out too in the morning. We didn’t go through six years of hell to have one of you living here. If my sister ever hears I took in a Jerry, I’d never know the last of it, what with my nephew dead and gone. Out, I say, out.’
It was the venom in her voice that was worse than the words themselves. Paul opened his mouth to say that he too had fought for this country, he’d risked his life time and time again, but the expression of hatred in her eyes told him it would be no good, she wouldn’t listen.
Hamburg. It was that simple word in his identity documents together with the soft consonants of his accent that held him back here. He had no family who wanted him, his home city lay in ruins, he had no job and, worst of all, he feared he’d been abandoned by the woman he loved.
Reaching his room, he threw himself down on his bed in the gathering darkness and struggled against despair. Not everyone was like the woman downstairs, he told himself. There would be somewhere he could go to live and find work, he simply wasn’t sure where it was yet. If only he could speak to Sarah. Never had he felt so lost, not even in the dark days after his mother’s death. Despite all attempts to keep it at bay, deep loneliness overwhelmed him. It seemed that the whole world had rejected him. Eventually he did the only thing he could think of, something he hadn’t done for years. He got down on his knees by the bed, folded his hands and tried to pray, whispering the old words from his childhood. He waited, but there came no answer and he wondered if anyone was up there listening anyway. Still, he felt more calm.
After a moment, he became aware of a hardness digging into his knee, the head of a nail, he saw, and in shifting painfully, almost lost his balance. He shot out a hand to steady himself and it hit something solid under the bed. His suitcase. He dragged it out, thinking at least he could pack and be ready for the morning.
It was a cheap affair that they’d given him at the demob centre, made of a material akin to thick cardboard. He set it down onto the bed, sprang the catches and opened the lid. His few possessions were there, a couple of books, the framed photograph of his parents that had accompanied him across continents among them. He wrapped the photo up safely in a sweater, then went to the wardrobe and began transferring the few clothes he had; socks, spare underwear, a shirt he’d bought using a few precious tokens. He jammed the wardrobe door shut then opened a drawer, took out his hairbrushes and shaving kit, felt for his notebook and sat down hard on the bed in surprise.
There was a wad of paper caught between the pages of the notebook, an identity card, he discovered, and a folded document. Puzzled, he opened the card to see Harry’s photograph staring out at him. He’d left them behind. Why? An uncomfortable feeling began to grow inside him. He examined the passport and found a slip of paper tucked in it like a bookmark. The scrawled writing was unmistakably Harry’s.
I won’t need these any more, so make what use of them you can. Sorry, old man, I’m not as tough as you are. Harry.
Sarah’s taxi was crawling west along the King’s Road before she realized that she’d left her canvas bag with Derek and a bolt of dismay shot through her. The letters, her precious box of letters! Since she’d planned to stay with her aunt for several nights, she’d brought them with her for comfort. She leaned forward to tell the driver to turn back, then checked herself. They’d be long gone now, Derek and his father. Her mind whirled, then she sat back in her seat, trying to calm herself by smoothing out the note that Harry had left for her; according to what it said, the unknown man at the station had been Harry. It should be possible to get her letters back, surely someone would know the Jenkins’ new address. She had visions of herself walking the streets of the East End trying to find them. A few days, that was how long Paul said in the note he would be at the hotel, and the date on it was two days before. Suppose she missed him? The traffic was moving so slowly. She refolded the note and tried to relax.
Paul. She hadn’t heard from him for several months, and now Ivor had come home with a horrible tale. There had been rumours and in the end she’d confronted him about them. Paul had disobeyed Ivor, his senior officer, and ended up getting them both into deep trouble with the authorities. The people in the little Italian town where they’d been stationed had risen up against the garrison, refused to cooperate with them any longer. There was a story about a boy who’d got shot, and Ivor was vague about this. Paul might have been to blame. To be honest, Sarah didn’t entirely understand Ivor’s story, there was some false note to it, but he’d refused to discuss it any further. The war was behind them now, over, and everyone was trying to pretend that things could go back to normal. Normal, pah. She’d been glad to have an excuse to get away for a night or two. Her mother was fidgety, Diane was fidgety. But Paul was back safe in England. Her heart soared.
She leaned and tapped on the glass and the driver slid back his square of window. ‘Can’t you go by a side street or something?’ she asked.
‘Sorry, lady, not till after the next junction.’
She sat back and closed her eyes, trying to stay calm, then opened them and glanced at Paul’s note once more. He mentioned a letter he’d sent her a few days ago. She’d never received it, which was odd, but then the post was odd sometimes.
Inch by inch they moved forward, past the roadworks, then finally they were through and the driver was swinging the car right down a long shadowy street. Sarah’s heartbeat quickened and she felt light-headed with anticipation.
The hotel was a shabby place crushed between a flyblown café and a boarded-up shop. A sign that read vacancies swung on its nail as she pushed the door open, somewhat gingerly. Her shoes scraped on dirty floorboards and the odour of cabbage added to her disgust. This was a place of a different order to the hotel in South Kensington where she’d stayed with Paul all that time ago. At least that had been clean.
An o
ld harridan with gimlet eyes glanced up from behind the narrow desk where she was adding up a column of figures on a scrap of paper and fixed on Sarah in disbelief. ‘Yes?’ she said suspiciously.
‘I’m looking for a friend who’s staying here.’
‘A friend, is it? What’s the name of this friend?’ She brought out a grimy guestbook from a drawer and began to leaf through it.
‘Hartmann, Paul Hartmann.’
‘Hartmann . . . ?’ The woman folded her arms and leaned forward over the book, her expression disdainful. ‘Yes, he was here, but I asked him to leave. I put up with him when the English gentl’man was with him, but I wasn’t having any fingers pointed at me, so I sent him on his way.’
‘Where did he go? Did he leave an address?’ She barely understood what the woman was saying, but caught her hostility all right.
‘What’s a nice young lady like you want with a Jerry?’
‘He may be German, but he fought for this country,’ Sarah said hoarsely. She’d lost him. Her legs felt weak, her mind was reeling and she put a hand on the wall for support. Then she picked up her case and headed for the door. She’d wrenched it open when the woman called:
‘Hang about, love, I didn’t say he had left an address.’ Sarah’s shoulders sagged and she looked back at the woman, wearily. The proprietress shot her a mutinous glare as she pulled her cardigan more tightly round her shoulders. Then she ducked down and fished about to a sound of rustling paper. ‘But I didn’t say he hadn’t, neither.’ She popped back up and held out a scrumpled envelope. Sarah snatched it from her and smoothed it out, saw with a soaring relief her name on it in that familiar handwriting. A circle of damp had made the pencil fade, and a scent of rotten apple confirmed her suspicion that it had been consigned to a waste-paper basket.
‘I didn’t think anyone was coming for it,’ the woman mumbled.
‘You didn’t wait long to find out.’ As Sarah turned away, the woman sniffed and muttered, what were things coming to.
Once outside she crossed the road and sat on the steps of a sooty brick chapel in the shade of a tree and tore open the letter. It was written hastily and bits were faint because of the apple core, but she could just about make out the words. Dearest Sarah, I’m to go in search of new lodgings. There’s a small park up the road, towards the underground, on the right, just before the bombed-out houses. I’ll try to be there in the afternoon at 4 in case you come.
Which afternoon? There was no date on the letter. She glanced at her watch, brushed an earwig from her case and set off up the street, thinking she saw the ruined houses he meant. It was a quarter to four. She passed a butcher’s shop where a tow-headed lad in a striped apron was placing a sign in the empty window. Ominously, it read, Sorry, no meet.
Cursing the weight of her case, Sarah broke out into a clumsy run.
Forty-four
In Cockley Market high street, Briony walked up and down, looking at the window displays, but noticing little beyond the repeated message that Valentine’s Day was on its way. The minute hand of the clock above the sign on the old coaching inn only crept, as much as she willed it on. She’d taken a day off and started from London in good time in case of traffic, but the traffic had been easier than expected and parking spaces plentiful. There was no market in Cockley on a Wednesday, that must be the explanation. The result was she had a whole thirty minutes to kill. Opposite the inn, she came to the café where she’d once seen Aruna. There was a table free in the window with a good vantage point, so she pushed open the door, thinking she’d warm herself up with a coffee.
As she lingered over a cappuccino, she thought again of what had brought her here, how Derek Jenkins had identified the man in the photograph whom she knew to be her grandfather as Paul Hartmann, not Harry Andrews at all. Did that mean that the drunken man at the station was Harry? Paul, Harry and Ivor – those were the names on the back of the photograph, so if ‘Harry’ was in fact Paul, was ‘Paul’ Harry? She and Derek discussed this for some time, and an idea came to her that made her prickle all over. How on earth could she prove it?
When she’d arrived back at her flat that afternoon, she tried some aimless searching on the internet that turned up nothing, before ringing her father’s landline, then his mobile, and finally her stepmother’s. No answer from any of them, which was frustrating. This didn’t stop her jumping into the car and driving down to Birchmere, her eyes dazzled by a most beautiful sunset. She found the house shrouded in gloom and rang the bell. Only the tabby cat appeared and rubbed itself against her legs as she waited on the doorstep.
Her phone rang. ‘Lavender? I’m in Birchmere. Where are you?’
Lavender was irritatingly vague. They were waiting somewhere for an appointment, Briony gleaned that much. Yes, of course it was all right for her to let herself in. She knew where the spare key was, didn’t she? Did she mind very much feeding the cat?
She found the key under its pot, and when she gained access she filled the cat’s bowl with kibble, then raced upstairs to her old room and dragged open the drawer under the bed. ‘Jean’s schoolbooks.’ That was the only box she hadn’t searched.
She worked quickly but carefully, flicking through the exercise books she took out and stacking them to one side. As the box grew emptier, her spirits lowered. With the final book in her hand, she examined the few items left at the bottom, but there were no documents about her mother or grandparents at all, no old passports or birth or wedding certificates, only a thin hand-made black evening bag decorated with jet beads. She sat back on her heels and brushed back a lock of hair, disappointed. Who was her grandmother? She’d be able to check, of course, in the public records, if she could find out her full name and dates, but everybody called her Molly. She picked up the evening bag. Its jet beads sparkled. Rather lovely, she thought, unbuttoning it. There was something inside, a comb, a handkerchief and a piece of soft thick card, with a pretty design, decorated with flowers and little songbirds, one holding a red leaf in the shape of a heart. A Valentine’s card, then. She opened it and gave a sharp intake of breath. Inside, written in thick black pen, in handwriting she recognized, were the words, My dearest Sarah, Forever meine Liebchen.
As she finished her coffee, Briony’s attention was caught by the arrival of a sleek grey Jaguar car. As she watched, it slowed, then turned and swept under the arch of the coaching inn past a sign that read, Customers car park. On some instinct she rose, slipped on her jacket, left coins for her coffee and went out, crossing the street and entering the inn by its heavy, iron-studded front door. Inside, she found herself in a comfortable old-fashioned lounge bar that smelled richly of beer and gravy and old wood. It was empty apart from a group of red-faced old men in identical navy blazers, crests on the pockets, and a pair of mature, beautifully groomed ladies who were poring over lunch menus at a table in the window. At the bar, a tall, thickset man in a charcoal-coloured overcoat was ordering a drink. When he turned and regarded her questioningly, she felt a little shock of recognition. Clean-shaven, short dark hair with a touch of grey, smoothed back over his head, this was the man she’d spotted with Aruna. He was also, she realized, the man she was here to meet – Greg’s father, Tom Richards.
‘Miss Wood. Briony.’ He stumbled over the name.
‘Yes.’ She moved towards him and held out her hand. For a moment he hesitated, then he shook it, his hooded eyes not meeting her gaze.
‘I’m glad to meet you at last,’ she said in as level a voice as she could muster. ‘We have a good deal to talk about.’
And at last he looked directly at her. ‘What’ll you have to drink?’ was all he said.
Tom Richards could pass for sixty, she thought as she studied him while he ate, though she knew he must be ten years beyond that. He was a whisky and soda man, taller and more solid than his son, but there was that same tightness about his moulded mouth, a wariness in his eyes. A man of few words and fixed opinions, he was not what her father would call clubbable. At some point in h
is life he’d learned to be suspicious, grudging even.
After he’d bought their drinks, they’d been ushered to a comfortable corner of the quiet, sun-filled, thick-carpeted, wood-panelled restaurant beyond the lounge bar. A carvery counter sizzled and steamed along one wall where chefs plated for them glistening roast meat and potatoes, fluffy Yorkshire pudding and brightly coloured vegetables, all topped with rich brown gravy.
‘Just right for a winter’s day,’ remarked Tom Richards as he spread his napkin and tucked in. He’d restricted his remarks so far to the business of the food. Briony, who was nervous and didn’t really want hers now that it was in front of her, picked up her knife and fork and tried a small mouthful of meat. The salty tenderness burst upon her palate and suddenly she was hungry. She sliced another piece, dipped it in the gravy and ate that, too. All the way here she’d thought about what to ask this man, and now that they were companionably eating she couldn’t think of how to break the silence. It was Greg who had brokered the meeting, but she’d told him firmly that she didn’t want him there himself. They’d both gang up on her, she’d believed, and she refused to be bullied any more. She wanted the truth and sensed she’d be more likely to get it out of Mr Richards if it was just the two of them together.
Tom Richards flagged down a passing waitress. ‘Another of these,’ he said curtly, pointing to his empty glass.
Briony, her mouth full, shook her head at the waitress’s enquiry.
It was only after his second whisky had been served and drunk and he’d eaten every morsel on his plate that Tom Richards slid his knife and fork together, tossed his napkin on the table, then sat back in his chair to regard her properly, as though noticing her for the first time.
‘That’s better,’ he said and cleared his throat.
Briony laid down her cutlery and pushed her half-finished meal from her. ‘Mr Richards,’ she said, running out of patience. ‘Tom.’ They were related, after all.
